Via Media Matters: Billo bloviates about about “craziness” in the media without ever mentioning his own network, which is the worst offender. Instead, he took on a recent exchange between Chris Matthews and Michael Steele on MSNBC – which was far from the one-sided right-wing propaganda Faux News Channel specializes in.

Matthews pointed out that Willard (“Mitt”) Romney is going to be the nominee of a party that believes there’s no such thing as science, and asked, “How does this guy go from hard right, severely conservative to this new regular mainstream character he’s portraying himself as?” Steele responded forcefully. Video here. [MSNBC, “Hardball,” April 23]

O’REILLY: The problem for American voters is that anything goes these days. The Internet is full of unbelievable nonsense, as well as gross defamation. And now on some national news programs, we’re getting the same craziness. So if you’re uninformed, how can you possibly know what’s true and what’s not true?

And the problem is not exclusively on the left.

How many times have we heard that Barack Obama was not born in America, that he’s a Muslim, a Manchurian candidate, a plant from outer space? Whatever madness the anti-Obama forces can think up.

We live in an age where truth really doesn’t matter anymore. Greedy news executives and the net have obliterated it. Journalistic standards have collapsed — the Trayvon Martin case proves that.

You can pretty much do anything you want in the media, and the courts don’t care. It’s almost impossible for a well-known person to win a judgment of defamation.

But Talking Points has had enough. So every time I see craziness in the national media during the campaign, I’m going to show it to you. And I hope you will vote with the clicker. That’s the only solution to the problem. [Fox News, The O’Reilly Factor, 4/24/12]

It will be interesting to see if O’Reilly and other commentators on his network go along with Romney’s Etch-A-Sketch campaign, or if they try to hold him accountable for the hard-right positions he declared during the primaries. I suspect Faux News will say whatever Karl Rove and other GOP operatives tell them to say, and Billo will call any other analysis “crazy.”

UPDATE: I never watch O’Reilly, so I didn’t pick up right away on his self–pitying. When he said. “It’s almost impossible for a well-known person to win a judgment of defamation,” he was probably thinking about the loofah/falafel thing on the Andrea Mackris phone sex tapes.

Wow. I haven’t seen Alan Colmes for about ten years, but he’s still the same guy alright; a “liberal” who’s completely willing to go on programs that degrade him and just sit there agreeing he deserves it. O’reilly makes a joke about not even remembering who he is and then addresses him with his last name.

O’reilly would never address Hannity as Hannity instead of Sean. I am so glad I don’t have Fox “news”, this stuff is so predictable. The shill woman on the show is STILL making the case that the liberals overwhelmingly control the media and, of course, O’reilly has to disagree, so he’s not seen as a fool.

I may have stumbled upon the problem…Analytic thinking can decrease religious belief: UBC study…

“Our study builds on previous research that links religious beliefs to ‘intuitive’ thinking,” says study co-author and Associate Prof. Ara Norenzayan, UBC Dept. of Psychology. “Our findings suggest that activating the ‘analytic’ cognitive system in the brain can undermine the ‘intuitive’ support for religious belief, at least temporarily.”

Cav, I stumbled across the porblem: Study shows that liberals are just wrong:

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic considered the 4,835 respondents’ (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

Rather than focusing on whether respondents answered a question correctly, we instead looked at whether they answered incorrectly. A response was counted as incorrect only if it was flatly unenlightened.

Even though Andrew Breitbart is dead, there are women going into Planned Parenthood clinics and asking for similar services. They ask if they can find out whether their baby is a male or female so they can abort the females.

Fox “news” will obviously air the story if one Planned Parenthood employee or plant says something that can be edited to make it look like they would encourage such an action.

As for Media Matters, all they do is produce unaltered videos and transcripts from media sources.

And coordinate with the DNC on how to spin stories to promote their Statist political agenda. That too.

I have pointed out examples where Rachel Maddow made an error and issued an on-air correction. When has Bill O’Reilly ever corrected himself?

If Maddow corrected every lie she says on air then her entire show would have to be devoted to correcting the previous show. Her only admissions of error are corrections which further extend her Statist I’ve never had a real job in my life point of view.

Bill O’Reilly lies every time he’s on the air, sometimes setting new records for mendacity. Remember when O’Reilly accused the 82nd Airborne of perpetrating the WW II massacre at Malmédy, Belgium? He didn’t even apologize for that incredibly outrageous statement, or issue an accurate correction.

Maddow on Sunday would not acknowledge at all that her claim that women make 77% of what men for equal work has several serious logical flaws to it, not to mention actual data on the whole important point of “equal work”. She wouldn’t even acknowledge the possibility that it was not equal work when one takes into account hours worked per week, conditions, occupation, safety, comfort, benefits, experience, education, etc.

But now there’s evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).

Yesterday morning on MTP Alex Castellanos would not acknowledge reality, which is typical of the right wing these days. They flatly deny facts that are widely accepted by everyone else. He rudely interrupted Rachel because he couldn’t wait for her to make a point before trying to drown her out with fallacious counterpoints.

The bottom line is, any well-informed, intelligent woman would find it hard to vote for any Republican in the next election.

I watched the exchange so I don’t need to read the transcript. Yes, he interrupted her. Gee, that never happens on talking head shows. Shocking. That does not change the fact that she refused to even question the myth “widely accepted by everyone else” except TIME magazine and the US Census Bureau, apparently.

There is no American who has not, or isn’t, living the benefit of the plunder of this land and others..the unjust taking and controlling of resources with a few bones for fellow tribal members has been the modus operandi of powerful men for so many years..

Apparently, a Congressional delegation went to Iraq today. The trip was supposed to be a secret. News outlets that knew of the trip had been told that the information was embargoed. But someone’s been teaching these fools in Congress to use Twitter…

[Olbermann said trip was top secret when it was only secret]

That’s nowhere near trying to justify war crimes in Iraq by claiming that a WW II Nazi war crime was committed by the U.S. Army. Which is what O’Reilly did, and he never apologized for his sickening accusation.

The angle to this to keep in mind is that the Republicans on the panel, Castellanos and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), simply reject the available facts on the wage gap. Despite ampleevidence that shows women make less than men for the same work, Castellanos chooses to believe his own version of reality in which that’s not the case.

As Rachel responded, “Wow. OK. Well, we’re working from different facts.”

…There’s simply no shared foundation of reality, which in turn shapes the policy debate in unproductive ways. The left sees gender-based pay disparity and looks for mechanisms to address the problem; the right rejects the existence of the disparity and sees no use for the solutions because, to them, there is no problem.

For his part, Castellanos tried to move the conversation away from the substance, evidence, and fact-based policies, and instead told Rachel, “I love how passionate you are. I wish you were as right about what you’re saying as you are passionate about it. I really do.”

Rachel noted that his comments were condescending, adding, “My passion on this issue is actually me making a factual argument on it.”

Because the conservatives on the panel are “working from different facts,” the factual arguments didn’t seem to matter.

But now there’s evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).

In Maddow’s own link, the study makes no attempt to make the comparisons apples to apples. It is Maddow who said “equal pay for equal work”. This study makes no adjustment for an accountant who works 80 hours per week, to one who works 35 hours per week. There is no adjustment for a nurse with 30 years of experience, vs one with 5 years of experience. There is no adjustment for a truck driver who is away from home 300 nights a year, and one who is home every night. So this study that Maddow links as her “ample evidence” is nothing more than ample evidence that anyone with a Public Policy major and not a statistics major has no fucking idea what she is talking about and she wouldn’t know the meaning of the phrase “equal work” if it bit her in the ass.

I wish you would try to put links in your comments. I’m tired of having to Google your sources. But in this case there’s no need.

If the GOP wants to go into the 2012 election denying that there is an equal pay problem, I think progressives might be OK with that. Because it’s so transparently false, everyone will know they’re lying.

Political conservatives seem to be very different from political liberals at the level of psychology and personality. And inevitably, this influences the way the two groups argue and process information.

If the GOP wants to go into the 2012 election denying that there is an equal pay problem, I think progressives might be OK with that. Because it’s so transparently false, everyone will know they’re lying.

You can stick with what “everyone knows.” I will stick with objective sources. How’s that flat earth thing working to for you?

Here’s the test for Republicans. If they genuinely believe there is no wage gap between men and women, then they should have on objection to passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Democrats, who inhabit the real world, know that women still make only 77 cents for every dollar men earn in similar jobs. Alex Castellanos, living in right-wing propaganda land, calls this an “old and discredited liberal myth.” Never mind the findings of the U.S. Census.

Here’s the test for Republicans. If they genuinely believe there is no wage gap between men and women, then they should have on objection to passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

First of all, it isn’t about “belief”. It is about evidence. As the US Census Bureau data shows, the data isn’t there on an apples to apples basis. So while your “faith” and “belief” is charming, you need to keep your religion out of politics.

As for your test, it makes no sense. What you are saying is that in order to validate the lack of a problem, we need to create another government regulation with all of its incumbent paperwork, lawyers and kommissars to enforce the lack of a problem. Good thinking there, old man.

Your alleged 77 cents number has already been disproven. It is pointless to keep repeating it.

That is not apples to apples even according to the US Census Bureau. That does not meet the “equal work” part of the “equal pay” myth.

From CNN:

WOLF BLITZER: And so, the bottom line, though, with men and women have the exact same job, do women still only earn 77 cents on the dollar, if they’re doing, working the same amount of hours, have the exact same job, in the exact same field.

LISA SYLVESTER: Now, as you go along, as you control for other factors, even if you control for everything you could possibly imagine, all those things — the college, the hours work, men still make more than women, that gap narrows, it’s about 5 cents of a difference

So Maddow lied and she has not apologized. So you lied too about the number and about Maddow.

RACHEL MADDOW:
But it is important, I think, the interruption is important, I think, because now we know, at least from both of your perspectives, that women are not faring worse than men in the economy. That women aren’t getting paid less for equal work. I think that’s a serious difference in factual understanding of the world.

77 cents is not for equal work. 77 cents is for less work. 95 cents is for equal work.

I suppose you could argue that a hospital nurse in a female-dominated occupation is more valuable than a medical lab technician in a male-dominated occupation. Yet who is paid less, on average? Who works harder? Who has more responsibility?

The only accurate comparison if you use the same “equal work” would be to compare a male nurse and a female nurse at the same hospital, in the same state, in the same city, with the same certifications, with the same years of experience, on the same shift, for the same hours”. Otherwise it is not “equal”. Then you are left with conjectures of relative worth which is not the point of the analysis. If you are saying equal pay for equal work then it needs to be equal work, not some other work. So all of your questions are pointless.